


It's a Long Road Home

by DrowningByDegrees



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Humor, Angst and Porn, Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthday Sex, Bucky Barnes Big Birthday Bash, But did you catch that there is angst in this fic? XD, Happy Ending, M/M, See? Told you it was going to be a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 06:10:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10211288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/pseuds/DrowningByDegrees
Summary: For the last few years, March 10th has been an awfully difficult day for a couple of boys from Brooklyn. Even the saddest times can't last forever.





	

**It’s March 10** **th** **, 2014,** and Steve has been out of the ice for nearly two years now. He thought maybe time would ease the soul-deep ache of what should be, but it doesn’t. Not really. Loss leaves fissures across his heart even now. It’s a wonder the damned thing keeps beating.

 

It’s not fair, not that life ever is. It’s his best friend’s birthday. Bucky deserves a cake and… well, the whole world if Steve’s being honest. Only Bucky didn’t get the world. Bucky didn’t even get a  _ grave _ . The responsibility Steve heaps on himself for that failure is crippling, a weight in the form of nightmares full of lifeless blue eyes and crimson splattered across pristine snow. Steve languishes in the bed, the sticky mire of grief and terror threatening to smother him still.

 

In the end, it isn’t a phone call or a mission that rouses him. It’s the niggling sensation that Bucky would be positively aghast at this particular display. Oh sure, there’d be the practically mandatory teasing, because Bucky never let on when he was afraid. Now though, more than seventy years later though, Steve remembers the exact look on Bucky’s face on the nights  Steve’s breath rattled, wet and weak in his chest. The minute Bucky thought Steve’s eyes were closed, something wrung out and pleading would crinkle Bucky’s brow, and his perpetual smile would flee in the face of impending grief. It’s that face the specter of his best friend is wearing now, looking out for Steve from some forgotten corner of his mind.

 

By some miracle, Steve drags himself from the confines of his bed. It’s an awful way to celebrate the memory of someone who’d been so full of light and laughter. Steve owes Bucky better, he reckons, so he does the only other thing he can think of, trekking out to the sorts of places he imagines his old friend would have wanted to go, given the chance.

 

D.C. isn’t quite the kind of place he thinks Bucky would fancy, but it has the Smithsonian. The museum complex is full of the exact sort of geekery Bucky would’ve enjoyed - by which he means all of it. Steve wanders through an exhibit of Japanese soldiers in WWII and an entire one dedicated to the evolution of the American definition of “cool”. There are Egyptian artifacts, an educational piece on themes of destruction in art, and even more about the war.

 

There is so _ much _ about the war, and staring at the black and white photographs is overwhelming. The soldiers in them weren’t the ones he fought with, but the memory of those who did still feels raw and tender. That isn’t even the hardest part. He knows what’s coming, but he puts one foot in front of the other anyway. Steve owes Bucky this, and maybe for a minute, he can think of his old friend and not see him falling.

 

The tribute to Captain America and the Howling Commandos isn’t really new. Steve was at its opening, and it hurt then too. He hid the grief behind a smile made for politics, hundreds of eyes on him while he spoke. Steve doesn’t even remember what he said anymore. Just that the most important piece in the exhibit was at his back when he did.

 

There are no eyes on him now, wandering the exhibit in a faded jacket and baseball cap. No one pays him any mind as he watches the film reel again and again, frozen in equal parts happiness and heartache. This. This is the way Bucky deserves to be remembered, smiling and beautiful despite everything.

 

“You’d have gotten such a kick out of this,” Steve whispers under his breath as his gaze finally falls on the plaque commemorating the life and death of his most beloved comrade. 

 

On the day of the opening, he hadn’t had the faintest notion that it would only be months before Bucky would stand in nearly this exact spot.

 

**It’s March 10** **th** **, 2014,** and a soldier sits, clammy and aching, confined to a chair. His muscles spasm with the pain of thawing, but it pales in comparison with the pulsing of his muddled head. He remembers nothing, but none of it feels new. There’s a voice that speaks to him, a distraction from the knifelike points of warming flesh, and he gropes for it with what coherence he can cobble together.

 

There’s an answer he’s supposed to give. It isn’t memory, but it’s conditioning, and the soldier’s lips move, though no sound comes out. His jaw aches, but he has no care for his own agony. He is a tool. A weapon. The Fist of Hydra. More importantly, he has a mission.

**It’s March 10** **th** **, 2015,** and most of the time it still feels like someone else’s memories were jammed into his head. It’s a miracle they stay in at all, because the fragments are hardly more than a sand castle, threatening to crumble under the tide. He has a name these days, though his hold on it is tenuous some days. Hydra’s long time weapon is now just Bucky, and when it doesn’t sound true, he believes it anyway because Steve Rogers told him so.

 

The name pulls something in his chest, like a stubborn clog in a pipe. The days he remembers more make him wish he could go home. They’re also the reason he knows he can’t. There is blood on his hands that won’t wash off, and he knows Steve doesn’t blame him, but that’s the problem. Steve is good. He’s so good, and he’s finally being treated like the hero Bucky always knew he was (and, somehow, that knowledge never leaves him, not even on the bad days), and Bucky… he can’t sully that. At best, he’s a liability, and he refuses to be an anchor to the only person he ever really loved.

 

It’s three in the afternoon before Bucky registers the date, and even then, it’s only because he picks up a candy bar at a newspaper stand along a bustling street in eastern Europe. Bucky is used to the noise these days, and though no one is looking for him here, he still waits for the other shoe to drop. Right now, the only thing that pulls his attention is the current date, printed just above a headline on the day’s paper. His birthday. His  _ ninety-eighth _ birthday.

 

Bucky isn’t sure what that means exactly. This body has been around for nearly a century, but he lost so much to Hydra - in one sense or another. He remembers bits and pieces, but his head was scrambled so many times that much of it is scattered and without context. Ninety-eight, he decides, is simpler than trying to suss out how much of his existence counts. It’s a dreadful number though, leaving him feeling haggard and lost. That’s a lifetime, but he’s never really gotten to live at all. He’s doing well just to keep treading water.

 

Maybe he’s not entirely without connections. Since he came over to fix a broken pipe their landlord wouldn’t, there’s an old Romanian lady in the flat next door that takes it upon herself to bring him dinner sometimes, insisting that she’s made far too much for herself. It’s a sweet gesture, and mostly Bucky appreciates it, but today the idea of company only makes him feel homesick. He resolves to take the fire escape to the roof instead, and hope she doesn’t realize he’s home.

 

He can feel the street vendor staring at him, and realizes he’s been eyeballing that newspaper for far too long. Does he look like the murderer he knows he is? If he were being more reasonable, he’d probably conclude that suspicion is just about the fact that he’s been hanging onto the same candy bar for a few minutes now and made no effort to pay. Fear, especially after all he’s been through, isn’t a terribly reasonable thing.

 

Bucky does remember to pay for the candy bar though. He puts a second on the little makeshift counter for good measure. It’s his birthday after all.

 

**It’s March 10** **th** **, 2016,** and Steve is on his way home from a run when the phone rings. It should be a happy thing because he knows who’s calling before he picks up. There’s only one number that ever calls this phone. The calls are infrequent, but the fact that they happen at all usually leave him overjoyed.

 

It’s hard to be overjoyed about it on a day like today. The fact that the phone is ringing at all only reminds him of what’s been lost. Steve picks up anyway, forcing a smile he hopes will silence the melancholy threatening to seep into his voice. “Happy birthday, Buck.”

 

“Thanks, punk.” Steve doesn’t need to see Bucky to know the resigned expression his old friend is wearing. He can’t see the ratty sleeping bag Bucky is curled up in, laid out on a battered, old mattress. What he swears he sees at the back of his mind in those two words is the soft, slight downturn of Bucky’s lips. What Steve knows is that the weary, rundown tone in Bucky’s voice is almost certainly reflected in the slightly drooping set of baby blue eyes, listlessly staring at the ceiling of another ramshackle apartment. It feels so real that it silences Steve for a moment.

 

“You could come home. Let me help you,” Steve urges, for what must have been the tenth time in as many calls. Apparently, the occasion doesn’t give him any extra leverage.

 

“You know why I can’t.” It’s true. Steve does know. It doesn’t make the sense of finality in that sentence any less painful. He hasn’t given up on Bucky, not for a moment, but it’s clear even without looking that Bucky has. That’s the worst of it, really. He can take Bucky and him against Hydra. He can handle Bucky and him against the entire world if he has to. What he doesn’t know how to fix is Bucky standing in his own way.

 

“Look. None of this is your fault. If this is some kind of penance, Bucky, I think you’ve more than paid,” he tries again. There’s a quiet sigh, and for a second Steve thinks he’s getting through.

 

“I have a roster full of nightmares reminding me otherwise.”

 

It breaks his heart, the image that conjures up. It’d be one thing, maybe, if Bucky had  _ someone _ , only Steve knows better. He knows Bucky is every bit as alone as he was when Steve found him. Gripping the phone that much tighter, he all but pleads, “Hydra made you do those things. It wasn’t your fault.”

 

The harsh breath into the speaker lets him know the conversation is over. It’s really not the kind of topic they ought to be quibbling over today of all days. Steve scrambles for something to say. “I miss you.”

 

The line is so quiet, Steve’s sure Bucky hung up for a moment. Good as his hearing is, he catches a noise on the line, but it happens a few times before he figures it out for the quietly hitching breath it is. He’d give about anything to be there, to hold on to Bucky, so that they didn’t have to be so terribly alone anymore. The miles between them are many though, and meeting face to face is risky. He’s kicking himself for not taking the gamble.

 

“I…” Bucky’s voice cracks and stutters on the line. “Look, I gotta go. Minutes are almost up.”

 

“Alright pal,” Steve forces out, and he hates himself for the way his chest clenches when he hears the call disconnect. The pain steels his resolve. This has gone on far too long already. He won’t let Bucky suffer through another year of it.

**It’s March 10** **th** **, 2017,** and he’s still not sure he approves of Captain America’s name being associated with someone like him. There’s some semblance of freedom, and a whole heap of nostalgia to it though. The tethers that hold Bucky no longer include the threat of prison. Hopefully. He’s not sure, given how the day has gone, but he’s burst into the apartment he shares with Steve, his lover at his heels, and no one’s shown up to cart them off yet.

 

“You,” he exclaims, “are fired from planning birthdays. Seriously. So fired.”

 

“What? You can’t seriously blame me for that,” Steve protests, hands in the air in a mockery of surrender that forces Bucky to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

 

“‘We haven’t been to a theater in  _ forever’ _ he says. ‘It’ll be fun’ he says.” Bucky’s imitation of his lover is exaggerated and good-natured, the closest he’s been to his old self in longer than anyone remembers.

 

“It  _ was _ fun.” Steve’s voice rises, and oh, Bucky missed this even when he didn’t remember what he was missing.

 

“Tell that to the movie goers whose showing of Get Out was interrupted by gunshots and running,” he drawls, smirking at the sheepish look it pulls from his lover.

 

“To be fair, that wasn’t my fault. We could’ve gone to a museum and they still would’ve shot at us.”

 

“Yeah…” Bucky sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “Still blaming you. No more being in charge of birthdays. Really, you probably shouldn’t be in charge of  _ anything _ at this rate. You’re going to have to tell me where you hid the remote.”

 

He catches the exact moment when something shifts in Steve’s posture. It’s subtle, but not so subtle to someone who’s known Steve Rogers for this many decades. There’s the slightest shift in the way Steve’s hips lean, closer and almost beckoning in a way they weren’t before.

 

Of course, while Bucky prides himself on picking up Steve’s subtle clues, there’s nothing subtle about the strong embrace he’s suddenly wrapped up in, or the way Steve’s lips are abruptly so very near to his. “How can I make it up to you?”

 

“Oh, I’ve got a few ideas.” Bucky wants to hate Steve for the way he’s already responding. They’re entirely in tune, and the moment he lifts his head, Steve’s lips trace the column of his neck. It’s a maddeningly tender gesture that sort of makes Bucky want to bite him. It’s all still new and delicious, and Bucky seesaws between wanting to savor every last touch and wanting Steve to devour him whole.

 

“C’mon. You’re already in trouble,” he whines when Steve reaches his collarbone only to pepper kisses back up his throat. He can feel the grin curving Steve’s lips, and it only encourages Bucky to speak up. “It’s my  _ birthday _ .”

 

It’s such a far cry from the last few, but that’s the very last thing on Bucky’s mind. The only thing he has room for in his head is the flat of Steve’s tongue against his skin, and the soft huff of laughter that puffs warm air against his newly damp throat. He’s just about to complain, but Steve’s lips surprise him, migrating from his neck to cover his mouth, and how does he begin to withstand that? He moves on automatic, fingers curling in the denim of Steve’s jeans as his lips part in an invitation, and he groans at the warm, wet pressure of Steve’s tongue delving between them. Sometimes he thinks he could come unraveled just from this.

 

It doesn’t take long to find the rhythm to match his lover. Bucky’s tongue swipes against Steve’s, and his whole body arches a little bit closer. Warm, solid fingers slide up the vertebrae at the base of his spine, and when Bucky gasps, Steve only claims his mouth further. He could die like this, he thinks, and be perfectly alright.

 

All too soon Steve releases his mouth, leaving Bucky faintly flushed and breathing harshly. Steve’s voice is a low, gravelly rumble that does obscene things to Bucky. “Am I forgiven yet?”

 

“Getting warmer,” Bucky rasps out, managing an impish smile and a tug to Steve’s belt loops with his metal fingers. It’s a clear enough invitation to put Steve in motion, steering them towards the bedroom. As deftly as Bucky usually moves, he clumsily stumbles backwards, groaning when his back hits the door, and Steve hits his front. They’re all heat and friction, and that jerk has to be doing this on purpose.

 

“You…” he starts, but it cuts off on a whimper as Steve’s teeth sink into the pulse point where his jaw and throat meet. Bucky’s cock twitches in response, sensitive against its fabric confines, and he doesn’t even notice the way he’s already scrabbling at Steve’s shirt. He can’t tip his head back any further with the door there, but Steve’s mouth on him is heaven, and he’s quickly forgetting what he was supposed to be mad about.

 

Bucky doesn’t quite figure how much of his weight the door is holding until it opens with the soft snick of a handle. His head is swimming with pleasure and want, and he can’t even remember when Steve let go of him long enough to do that, but he nearly tumbles to the floor before he’s caught in an embrace. It’s part an embrace, part an awkward dance that lands him in a heap on the bed with Steve perched tantalizingly over him. There’s a knee pressed between his thighs, and Bucky grins at the ceiling. It’s going to be like that, is it?

 

He never gets the opportunity to consider beyond that. Steve’s already sliding solid, unyielding palms beneath the fabric of his shirt, and Bucky absently lifts up so Steve can get rid of the offending fabric. It’s more than worth the effort. After all, the moment it’s gone, Steve nuzzles against his neck again, sucking hard on the crook of Bucky’s shoulder until he trembles. “How about now?”

 

“H…uh?” is all Bucky manages. Conversation is such a tedious thing when his mind feels like it’s spinning out wonderfully in every direction. He’d forgotten how tactile he was before coming home, but now he can’t get enough of it. Casual touches. Warm, intimate gestures. It’s all lovely, but this is superb. It’s so superb he can only barely muster a scowl at the way Steve chuckles.

 

“Am I un-fired?” The question is laced with intent that doesn’t sound like it belongs there. Only, it absolutely belongs there because Steve’s thumb is gliding down his sternum, and something about the goddamned suggestion makes Bucky’s thighs fall further open. He’s helpless, it seems, a puppet at the mercy of Steve’s strings.

 

“I’m thinking about it,” he mutters, breath hiccupping when a thumb down his breastbone becomes a thumb brushed across his nipple. It makes his body lurch upward and his breathing hitch, his fingers scrabbling at Steve’s clothes all over again. There’s suddenly entirely too much fabric between them and he aims to do something about that. Flesh and metal fingers ruck up the back of Steve’s shirt, and he’s liable to tear it in his eagerness, but it doesn’t come to that. Brat that he is, Steve wriggles out of the garment, leaving them close and warm, but it’s not nearly enough.

 

“Thinking? I don’t like the sound of that.” Banter has always been a part of the truth of them, and Bucky is elated that it doesn’t stop just because there are fewer clothes between them. It’s breathier, littered with tongues and teeth and  _ oh heavens _ Steve’s palm grinding against his cock, but the sentiment remains. Shamelessly, Bucky grinds upward against Steve’s hand. He’s not a greedy creature when it comes down to it, but special occasion and all.

 

“Guess you gotta do something about it,” he breathes out, managing an impish grin. It doesn’t last for long. The uptick of his lips becomes a rounded “oh” of pleasure as Steve’s lips and tongue lavish attention on his torso. Deftly, Steve tugs open the button of his jeans. The letup of pressure as the zipper slides down makes him whimper, and he moves on automatic, lifting his hips to allow the last of the clothing he’s wearing to be removed. He huffs out a laugh at the way Steve haphazardly wrestles with his shoes until they fall with two thuds on the carpet. His jeans and underwear aren’t far behind, and he might complain, but he never gets the opportunity.

 

Steve’s mouth isn’t on his stomach anymore. Steve isn’t over him at all. Bucky reaches out, flesh and blood fingers curling against Steve’s scalp, but his lover pays him no mind. The flat plane of his stomach is traded for the delicate flesh along the inside of his thighs. Steve’s kisses drag upward like creeping moss, and Bucky swears he’s going to die of old age before anything even happens, but he’s already quivering with desire.

 

“Don’t tease,” he whines, hooking a leg around Steve’s shoulders in an effort to draw him closer. The whole universe feels like it’s unraveling, and he’d be alright if Steve would just go where Bucky most needs him.

 

There’s something that sounds like a retort, but it’s muffled by Bucky’s thigh against Steve’s mouth. Kisses pepper pale, delicate skin, and suddenly Bucky isn’t entirely certain how he lived without this. He’s barely surviving the wait. The flat of Steve’s tongue is electricity up nerve endings Bucky didn’t even know existed. All he knows is that Steve Rogers, boy scout that he is, has the most sinful mouth Bucky’s ever encountered.

 

By the time Steve finally deigns to mouth at the crease of Bucky’s thigh, he’s a wreck of faint shivers and frayed nerves. His fingers clench and unclench in Steve’s hair, his leg desperately trying to pull Steve just a little closer. This isn’t what he’d had in mind, but he can’t possibly bring himself to say no.

 

“You still thinking?” Steve asks, whispering against the head of Bucky’s cock. There’s a smart mouthed retort somewhere, but it’s lost in the unearthly noise that comes out instead. That wasn’t him. It can’t have been him, but his breath hitches on a low moan at the ceiling when puffs of air become slick heat and pressure around him.

 

For how new this shift in their dynamic is, they fit like they’ve never known anything else. The fingers of Bucky’s hand find their way to Steve’s hair, something to ground him in the moment. He’d endure the nightmare of the last few decades all over again if this is where it lands him. 

 

His eyes roll back as the tip of Steve’s tongue drags along the head of his cock, and his teeth work frantically across his lower lip as he’s swallowed down again. It’s so sudden, Bucky yanks at Steve’s hair in earnest, and he means to apologize. Truly, he does. Only Steve hums around him in a way that is both fascinating and overwhelmingly good, so he does it again instead. 

If he’s honest, he thought about this long before Steve was all strength and sleek muscles. It’s still that wisp of a man who haunts his dreams sometimes. He’ll take Steve however he can have him though, which currently is crouched between his thighs, doing unspeakable things. Bucky doesn’t even realize how tightly wound he is until he hears the scrape of metal as the slats of his fingers press harshly together in the bed sheets, nearly tearing the fabric. 

 

While Steve’s mouth is thoroughly occupied, his hands are less so. Bucky shudders under the scrape of nails skittering up the inside of his thigh. He can’t help the way his thighs fall further apart, the invitation practically instinctive. He also can’t help the way he whimpers at Steve’s other palm curling around his balls, fingertips dragging along the smooth, sensitive skin behind them. 

 

Want drowns out everything else, and reality narrows to the warm pressure of Steve’s lips and tongue against his cock. Bucky’s heels dig into the small of Steve’s back, giving him the leverage to arch desperately upward in search of relief. If Steve minds, he gives no indication, matching the tempo of Bucky’s hips rolling forward. 

 

“Oh hell,” Bucky breathes out, biting his lip in a futile attempt to hold out just a little longer. Steve’s thumb drags against the patch of skin behind his balls in time with the bobbing of his head. The pressure is enough to push Bucky over the edge with a keening wail, coming hot and sticky against the back of Steve’s throat. 

 

“Sorry… Sorry, I…” he pants, trying to catch his breath and cobble together a sentence. Steve swallows and grins up at him in a way that makes Bucky’s toes curl. Has Steve always been so pretty like this? Probably. Lucky for him that he gets to witness it just now. 

 

“So,” he hears Steve rumble between kisses to the divots of Bucky’s hips. “Still thinking?”

 

“Yup.” The word pops sharply. Bucky’s lips purse in a petulant scowl, but he can’t hold onto it. The corner of his mouth twitches into something playful and impish as he reaches out to pull Steve closer. “Mostly about how you’re wearing too many clothes.”

 

Bucky’s efforts are met with a laugh as Steve follows his lead, clumsily shucking clothes as he goes. These are the moments Bucky wants to live in, where Steve is as happy as he is, and they’re too tangled up with each other to care about much of anything else. Bucky’s still caught up a bit in the haze of release, but it doesn’t stop his cock from twitching at the way Steve’s length drags against him as they press closer. He doesn’t miss the way Steve’s breath stutters either, the sound gorgeously blatant. 

 

They don’t need words, mostly. They’re a team and these are moves they know by heart. There’s a blind fumble for the handle of the bedside drawer, delayed by the way Steve rocks against him. The promise of future satisfaction is hard to care about when Steve is sucking at his neck right this second. It’s something of a miracle that Bucky manages to grab hold of the drawer eventually, yanking it open with a squeal of wood warped by time. Steve nobly gives up dragging his hands over Bucky’s bare skin to fish a bottle from the drawer, wiggling it rather ridiculously at Bucky. They’re definitely a team. 

 

There’s something marvelous, Bucky decides, about Steve bringing him off first. Oh sure, he’s already thinking about another round, impatiently pressing into Steve’s slick, tentatively prying fingertips until two of them nudge their way inside him. Even with how regular an occurrence this has become, it still burns ever so slightly. He wants, but it’s patient and level headed enough to let Bucky enjoy his lover’s desperate attempts to concentrate. It’s tantalizing and endearing in equal measures. 

 

Despite all that focus, Steve’s efforts are mostly perfunctory, and that’s alright. The sooner it’s over, the sooner Bucky can reach his lips again. He likes the somewhat too tight stretch of Steve inside of him anyway. It reminds him what’s real. 

 

More than watching Steve’s attempts to focus, Bucky likes this part. Playfully, he bats Steve’s hand away, muttering at him to come  _ here _ . Steve settles between Bucky’s legs and lines up, but Bucky is certain he gets the better end of the deal. Steve get’s to be inside him, but Bucky gets to see the moment where anticipation gives way to something better, and Steve Rogers falls apart. There’s a tremble of Steve’s body against his, Steve’s absurdly plush lips parting on a low groan. 

 

They move in this like they do in everything, two parts of a whole. Bucky catches Steve’s mouth against his own, swallowing soft sighs and whispered endearments. Bucky can’t stop touching, fingertips memorizing Steve’s back and hips like it’s the last chance he’ll ever get. 

 

Steve’s half unraveled, and Bucky forces his eyes open, trying to memorize that too. There are few things lovelier than Steve’s eyes at half mast, cheeks flushed with effort and desire. It’s a picture he tries very hard to hold onto, even when Steve’s hips stutter and a hand curls around his cock to bring him along for the ride. 

 

Remembering something from before, Bucky lifts a hand to curl in Steve’s hair. He unceremoniously gives it a rough tug, wondering if Steve had really liked that as much as he seemed to. The string of curses he gets in response are all the answer he needs, and plenty of encouragement to do it again. It’s half teasing and half hanging on for dear life as Steve roughly thrusts into him again and again. Steve’s slick fingers around his length move in the same rhythm, wonderfully overwhelming in light of everything else. He barely catches the way Steve cries out before orgasm sneaks up on him, the aftermath leaving them both boneless and gasping for breath. 

 

It’s long, quiet moments before they find the energy to unwind a little, and then it’s only to get more comfortable. They fit together like the Lincoln Logs Bucky vaguely remembers playing with as a kid, Steve’s chest pressed to his back, and arm hooked around his waist.

 

“So… how about  _ now _ ?” Bucky opens one eye at the sound of Steve’s voice, but his lover only nuzzles against his back. “Am I still fired?”

 

“I guess not,” Bucky concedes, smiling at the weight of Steve’s chest pressed to his back.

 

There’s a tender kiss to Bucky’s shoulder. “Oh good. I’d hate to have to cancel the rest of your birthday.”

  
“The rest of? Hang on a minute,” Bucky protests, fearing the worst. He can play at being a person, but he’s not sure he’s entirely up to the amount of company inviting the Avengers over would mean. “What kind of plans?”

Steve’s teeth scrape at the nape of Bucky’s neck in a way that makes him grind his hips against the sheets. He sucks in a sharp breath, grinning when he feels Steve’s mouth brush the edge of his ear. “You know.  _ Plans _ .”

 

**It’s March 10th, 2017**  and somewhere in D.C. a wound that has ached for decades is mending. Two broken boys are wound up in the sheets and each other, learning what it is to be happy again. 


End file.
